Pages

20100306

Not stolen: the frail old man’s hunting rifle; a shotgun; several bags of discarded groceries…

March 6 2010 – VANDERBIJLPARK - Parkinson’s sufferer Robert Hunter, 68, was hacked to death with a panga on his smallholding in Mullerstuine near Barrage early on Friday morning. The frail Afrikaner man also suffered from joint and bone illnesses and was barely able to walk – let alone defending himself against three young, black male attackers. He was found by his distraught son shortly before 5am, said SAPS Inspector Kinnie Steyn, (pictured left).

Relatives said the old man was only able to walk ‘one small step at a time’. The son Freddy - who lives in another cottage on the same smallholding, woke up to find three young black males attempting to steal his father's car. They fled after he fired several warning shots. Entering the cottage with the alerted security company officials the frail pensioner was found with a large wound in his chest ‘caused by a sharp object’ confirmed police. Next to the father's car they found a hunting rifle and shotgun. Several bags of groceries were later discovered in a neighbouring field. when police arrested three suspects several hours later they were found with a stolen shotgun, cellphones and jewellery. The men were being sought for other armed robberies in the area. They would appear in Vanderbijlpark Magistrate's Court on Monday. On this picture by Beeld journalist Sonja van Buul – who was the first journalist on the scene – SAPS inspector Kinnie Steyn is consoling another witnesses, Freddy Hunter’s distraught fiancee Meisie Smith, 52.http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?from=rss_South%20Africa&set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=nw20100305183841831C578999

Ratepayers countrywide are declaring legal disputes: diverting their rates to taking over the work of incompetent/fraudulent ANC-run municipalities

Other important news from Vanderbijlpark municipality: its local ratepayers’ association – similar to 280 other associations countrywide – now also legally runs all their own municipal services with skilled volunteers -- after declaring a legal dispute through the law courts with the incompetent ANC-run town council.

This legal process allows their rates to be legally diverted to a ratepayer-run Trust Account. This week, this maligned ‘paralel government’ proved its mettle however -- when all the local residents got together to remove over a ton of rotting fish – saving the precious Vaal River from a potential environmental disaster. The Vaal is the only fresh-water resource for the entire Gauteng region and tens of millions of people rely solely on this water for their survival. Such citizen-action should be praised – however instead ANC-ministers are angry about the fact that more than 280 municipalities countrywide now are run by ‘paralel governments’: independent Ratepayers’ Associations who have declared disputes and took over their own municipal services. Last week South Africa’s ratepayers won another victory in Port Elizabeth where the local High Court ruled that their ratepayers’ association was legally allowed to fire their incompetent/fraudlent local ANC-appointed municipal manager. http://www.beeld.com/Content/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/1928/c59fd08cefdf4f8c8ccf7bc0d79f9bfa/05-03-2010-10-52/Inwoners_red_self_hul_rivier

Picture: this lone Afrikaner cop Police inspector Peter Smith, this week got a large crowd of stone-throwing “service-delivery rioters” in Boiphatong near Vereeniging calmed down enough so that they followed him in an orderly procession to the local municipal officers to discuss their grievances calmly. Up to that point other police officers had been lobbing rubber bullets at them and the crowd got angrier by the minute as a result. This lone cop saved the day – however elsewhere hundreds of rioters are being locked up in similar protests for months now: in Brits north of Pretoria this week – where the ANC still runs the municipal services – the municipal drinking-water now is so filthy that it’s even full of worms and green slime. Little surprise then that people are growing angrier by the day. and that ratepayers are declaring disputes…

BOTHAVILLE – Free State. South African (very few) remaining macro-maize-farmers warn that the country’s primary staple-food ‘s production is greatly threatened by soaring electricity prices and the growing network of potholed roads: the farmers can’t get their crops to markets unless they can still afford to use the tollroads – which are only being maintained because they received a huge R640-million cash injection in 2009 from the European Development Bank… .

The rest of the country’s roads network – which the ANC deems to be the ‘responsibility of cash-strapped local municipalities – now is deteriorating so rapidly that it’s dangerous for heavly-laden trucks to drive over the potholed roads. And the farmers also warned that they can’t afford to keep on farming with maize at a loss – especially now that the state-utility Eskom was granted 97% tariff hikes – being smeared out over the next 3 years -

Thus the country’s food security is placed under severe strain . Mz Cecilia Khuzwayo, chair of the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) granted ESKOM tariff hikes totalling 97% over the next three years. This year’s first increase of 24.8% starts from April 1 2010. Objections were raised widely: for instance Free State Agriculture president Louw Steytler warned in a powerful presentation to Nersa that any higher electricity costs would definitely cause a drop of 45% in the country’s food production directly. Electricity already accounts for 8% of an irrigation farmer’s production budget to plant maize, he warned back then.http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/2010/03/high-electricity-potholed-roads.html

Seventy percent of the 535 members of Parliament in SA have ‘questionable ethics’:

… according to this email making the rounds .. which explains the problem with the ANC as follows:

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 500 employees and has the following statistics: 29 have been accused of spousal abuse 7 have been arrested for fraud 19 have been accused of writing bad cheques 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses 3 have done prison time for assault 71 cannot get a credit cards due to bad credit 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges 8 have been arrested for shoplifting 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year

A shocking music video -- in which South Africans who lost loved ones to violent crime take a stand -- was released by trade union Solidarity and the local band Niemand – singing the dark lyrics of the well-known song Jericho.

BLOEMFONTEIN.Left:An urgent fund-raiser was launched to help in the survival of 20-year-old Afrikaner youth Jaco Steenbergen – who was left semi-comatose after he was struck a bolt of high-voltage electricity in November 2009 -- and then nearly starved to death through the gross neglect at a local State hospital. ...

The care of this comatose patient was so poor and uncaring that four months later the youth was released from hospital in a shockingly emaciated state, with an anal infection and extensively infected bedsores. Moreover he has to survive like this while living in a two-roomed shed on a subsistence-smallholding with his parents who have fallen on bad times and now manufacture door- and window-frames for a living. Yet with the proper care and enough food he could actually recover within 18 months. http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/2010/03/shocking-neglect-of-comatose-patient-at.html

-----------------

Dutch-born evangelist J A A Slootmans of Dordrecht in South Africa, wrote the following letter to the Queenstown and Dordrecht public hospitals and to the KwaZulu Public Health minister:

On 19 February 2010 a telephone appointment was made for me for an eye-examination at Queenstown Hospital on 23 February 2010. It was arranged that I spend the night at Dordrecht hospital – because the ambulance would pick us up at 4.30am – so at the given time I was wiating there. The ambulance showed up at 5:45am. They loaded eleven people in the small bakkie – illegal because there were far too many for such a limited space. We were packed in like sardines. My back was lodged against a bottle and every time we went to a hole in the road my back hurt. Upon arrival at Queenstown we all had to stand in a row while our names were read off – and then taken to a place with many people seated on long benches, waiting for our files. When they came to me I was told that I was in the wrong hospital because they ‘didn’t work without advance appointments’. Another new date then was set for July – five months more to wait for an eye-appointment. I have now been waiting for this appointment for two years.Meanwhile I can’t get new glasses and my driver’s license expiry-date is getting closer. That entire day I sat on those hard benches -- after my back already was injured during the rough ride to the hospital in that overcrowded ambulance.

When everyone who had been on the ambulance from Dordrecht came back from their appointments with their doctors I went to the reception at around noon -- and asked them to call an ambulance to take us back. We then waited and waited and waited – nothing happened. There was no food nor water while we waited. By 9pm I phoned my son waiting for me at the Dordrecht hospital and asked him to come and fetch me rather - because the number of patients who now needed to be taken back to Dordrecht had by then swelled to sixteen. I finally got home at midnight.”

Rev Slootmans writes to the management of the hospitals and the health department: “Human beings aren’t just numbers – we have to carry out our duty of helping humanity with kindness in our hearts. Yet while sitting at that hospital I saw a man in a wheelchair whose legs had been amputated due to diabetes – and who also had to sit and wait there that long. That is simply unacceptable. You aren’t working with animals – these are human beings, made in the Lord’s likeness. I felt deeply sorry for all those people who are being maltreated like this. I don’t know why this is happening – if it’s a lack of money than we no longer have any effective government. Upon my return home - I was thinking about those people still waiting there : and who must have arrived home far later than I did in the rain and the pitchdark – and the women had to then still walk home with their children. I think it’s a disgrace. I hope that you take my letter to heart and that you correct this problem – I am mailing this letter to both hospitals and also to the Health Department headquarters. Yours sincerely - Dr. J.A.A.Slootmans drslootmans@telkomsa.net

Background:Rev Slootmans was born in Rotterdam in 1937 and -- as did many working-class families from this large harbour city, (destroyed by the invading Nazis’ bombardments) - emigrated as a young boy with his family to South Africa in 1952, first settling in Port Elizabet and eventually turning to evangelism and attending mission stations countrywide. In 1990 he experienced a calling and returned to the Netherlands to found the “Gereformeerde Christen” kerk in Enschede. Six years later he returned to South Africa to administer pastoral services to the coloured communities and now lives on a subsistence-smallholding near Dordrecht in KwaZulu.

-------------------------“

BENEFIT-CONCERT TO GET INCURABLY-ILL SOUTH AFRICAN GIRL TO TREATMENT CENTRE IN BELGIUM

A benefit-concert is also being planned in Gentbrugge, Belgium on June 20 2010 by South African gospel/blues singer Jenny Brown -- to help pay for the medical care and the travel costs to Belgium for her sister and her deadly-ill little niece who now live in Breidbach in King William’s Town. The singer’s niece Melody suffers from the incurable muscular disease Friedreich Ataxia - but her mother Bernadine can’t afford the medical care in South Africa -- and the collected funds will also go towards providing medical care for little Melody.

Jenny Brown is her stage name – her actual name is Jennifer De Bruyne-Thompson. Friedreich's ataxia is an inherited and incurable disease causing progressive damage to the nervous system – with muscle weakness, speech problems and heart disease. Ataxia results from the degeneration of nerve tissue in the spinal cord and of nerves that control muscle movement in the arms and legs. Symptoms usually begin between the ages of 5 and 15 but can appear as early as 18 months or as late as 30 years of age. The first symptom is usually difficulty in walking. The ataxia gradually worsens and slowly spreads to the arms and then the trunk.The collected funds will also be earmarked for two other purposes: the non-profit group Sinethemba in the Swartland region; and the Oklahoma-clinic, Malmesbury. The organisers did not provide a legal income-tax deduction number -- which is required in Belgium before funds can be collected for any charitable purposes, however. Jenny will sing to the accompaniment of pianist Etienne van Beethoven on 20 June 2010 at the “Vierde Zaal” in Driebeek Street - located in the Flemish town of Gentbrugge.

The tickets cost €8 each. Payments and electronic transfers to donations can be made directly to the Bank:

The term "genocide" was coined by legal scholar Raphael Lemkin in 1943, writing:

'Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actionsaiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.

The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity and lives of the members of such groups... '